FLASH FICTION

I'm a little apprehensive about introducing Marilyn to my folks. Dad's no bigot but he is old school. "I've heard of mixed marriages, but this is ridiculous!" I only hope he can restrain himself, and say that in private to me.

They're bound to wonder what sort of offspring we'll hatch. We've done the tests, we are cross-fertile. Mom's bound to say she'd be happier if we weren't, but we've discussed it. We've both decided to call it a favourable sign, a nod our way by fate.

I suggested we fly down. I know all the underground flightways like — I won't say the back of my hand, because humans are proprietary about that term, and Marilyn is human. There's no denying this though, we had opposable thumbs long before people did. They don't mention that so much in the folklore and legends. We decided on driving as it's a long trip, and that way we could each take a turn. (Humans have their points, but I've never met even a mutant with wings you could rely on in a headwind. Maybe ours will be the first.)

She told me she'd been getting so bored, at the party where we met, with the lines men were feeding her. The one in the Dracula cape (I could read his lips across the room) "You're just my type." The wolfman crooning "What a little moonlight can do." And me? "You look good enough to eat." Well at least I made her laugh.

(None of us have of course, not since the Ragnarok/Potsdam accords. I doubt any of us could any more,`we've shared the dominion of earth so amicably with humankind for so long. I discovered later she had given my words a completely different construction, and the boldness was what made her laugh. When I understood what she'd taken me to mean it made me blush violet and crimson, like a chameleon in a field of lilacs and poppies. I hadn't intended to be quite so forward.)

She told me later it had been nearly a week before she stopped wondering when I'd take off my costume. I think she must have believed what she wanted to until our differences no longer mattered. I stoop quite a bit and even so stand twelve foot tall. (Just over six if I decide to go about for a while on all fours.) My wings normally tuck invisibly behind, but extended their full length when we made love, had a span of six foot from tip to tip. My tail is another body for length, and can crack like a whip or move slow and sinuous as our evolutionary cousin Anaconda. (Humans have body language, but they don't have tail language, and it costs them some in expressiveness.) Did she really imagine all that could be a costume, with a feeble male, six foot high or so, somewhere deep-buried in its frame, directing and manipulating its every move? We laughed about that, and I told her about the lava spas near where I was born.

Scenic Journey
She went up and down the moving railway belts with the laundry. The incinerators were somewhere inside the huge vaulted station, and on one of the platforms, the same man boarded twice. He gave her his saxophone even though she was not musical, and a card describing himself as a teacher of the lost.

The corridors below were dusty and finally she asked for directions and was led to an office where the manager took the stained laundry and asked her to sign a release form.

Party dresses made from found objects were being given away as a work incentive and she picked one with an appealing candy frill suitable for a wedding. On her way out, she noticed a solicitation pinned to the notice board. Prince Charming looking for Laundry Woman, Conditions Apply, Wages Negotiable. She jotted down the details and kept walking to the wrong exit where the junction had many arms, the streets were wide and crossing over was a terrible hazard.

On reaching the island opposite, she found her way to a fish market where the ocean came roaring in on pylons and the beasts of the sea were spitted and carried on moving rails to the different stalls. She moved through the carnage in her party dress which was untouched by the innards of the beasts. At one market stall, where she stopped to look closely at the flesh for sale, a man was complaining that his wife was a millstone about his neck. One of the hanging creatures bore a faint resemblance to her mother. She had the man pack it in ice and took it away with her, walking with confidence till she found the station and the train to take her back home.

Where I'm Going
When I was about to die, age six, my mother took the rooster down to the local parish and sacrificed it for chicken soup. The rooster had yaw disease and was done for anyway. The priest smoked a cigar while he blessed me. He was English. Sexy black toddlers newly released from their mothers’ back-sashes, swarmed over to my hammock. They watched the outdoor service with me. The cure was not instant but a miracle over twelve months.

A few years later there was another coup d'etat and I got a waterborne disease that left me with a weak digestion. This time my mother didn't bother with the fowls of the earth; she and dad packed up and went back to fur coats and barley soups. My mother suffered a nervous disposition from a lack of sun and serotonin.

Nothing could happen to me, I believed, that I would not be able to survive. Except for John, who calls me up to say I am a blemish on his life. He doesn't use that word but I know what he means. I make some absolutely delicious apple cake from three kilos of apples. I place a steaming slice onto white china and throw an embroidered napkin over it. It's a short walk from one farming acreage to the other. And a gap-toothed man stops me at the mailbox and says hi, where're you going? Hey, he calls after me, I know where you're from.

Trip
In Brunswick Street, I saw someone familiar. Hi, I said, and let my brain ping pong. I know you, I said. He was short and fat and was wearing a loud red shirt. I worked it out — the guy was my first real estate agent. He said he had a new business cleaning chimneys and I looked around for his Mercedes, and it was still there, so chimneys had to be lucrative. I looked at him differently because I was now looking down at him instead of up at him. I can be funny with people who aren't family. I have to figure out if they are over me or under me, otherwise I feel uncomfortable. He asked what I was doing and I said that I was working on the branding for the Olympic Games. An incredibly tall black man skated past. I wondered if he was a refugee. He did not have shoes. I wondered aloud if this was safe. Then my tram was coming and I ran for it and my left foot felt as if a marble had rolled under and my ankle twisted, and I tipped and the tram hit me and I lay on the asphalt and absorbed the warmth from the asphalt. I began to think about my death list, all the things I needed to accomplish, like: get enough money in my account so I could get ten percent instead of four.